In a blink of an eye two week quickly passed and investing initially on Tony’s Dungeon Core Holder, 108,500 mp was invested into his three upgrades causing his 1 mp per day to increase to 120 mp per day. Helped in the overall mana increase though not as much as the gathered mana per body.

The dungeon was setup by the Dwarf and Golem race. Similar to Goblins, Golem were once magical elemental monster born from stone without much conscious thought. After selective breeding by countless breeders and tamers, a sentient race was born among them. Natural golem are rough and rather bulky but these sentient golem were perfectly humanoid shaped like walking statues.

The dungeon was set up with a golem city lord and a huge amount of the corridors were filled with rare minerals and gemstones which drew in a great deal of people to these cities for the metal industry. Of course, everything is with it’s risks.

As an authorized defense mechanism to keep up the dungeon element, when mining of the walls happen, monsters begin to gather at the mining zone. Most monsters don’t actually appear during travel but after mining begins making these kinds of dungeon be referred to as Mine Diving dungeons. Rarely would a stay monster be in the corridors.

Every month the corridors are restored from the gathered mana from dungeon ship owners and what is extracted, unlike other dungeons, Mineral producing dungeons charge money and mana for both corpses and minerals extracted.

That said, after buying Tony’s upgrades, everything went into the 60k mp Mine Drone Station and the 90k Mineral Refinery. A total of 150,000 for it was obtained with an extremely hard grinding pace that left everyone sore.

Leah, Mirella and Tony were the main combat force. That said, monsters in this dungeon were made of stone, it was incredibly hard to kill them because even mobs were tedious. Victor was the miner, with machines he and Tony built by paying mana during the time they were without mining drones so he wasn’t a fighter and Joce, Nelim and Crystal were non combatants, Crystal remained at the ship while Nelim came for support and Joce for healing.

Still, the monsters are incredibly hard to kill even when they were on the 1st floor where copper ore and small veins of iron was located. On the other hand, the return was similarly as great as the difficulty.

Rock Doll

40 mp

Gem rock Spider

70 mp

Rock Spider

25 mp

Mud Golem

80 mp

Dust Bunny

15 mp

The list above were all floor 1 and 2 monsters which is how far the party reached. Obviously as a mining town, it’s population is huge and thus Bordon developed quite deeply allowing his upper floors to grow stronger.

Rock Spider and Dust Bunny are the most abundant creature and come in swarms like Imps and Bullet fish. Gem Rock spiders are similar to the Winged Imp of their species. They are a rank higher after leader sized spiders.

Mud Golem are the strongest creature in the first two floors but Rock Dolls are just behind it because one is a strange fluid golem making them even harder to kill while the other is hard.

As such, with these five creatures, after two weeks, helped gather the over 200,000 needed to make the five upgrades and purchase ten of Victor and Tony’s Mark 2 Mining Drone.

“Is it safe to bring so many?” Leah asked.

“Of fucking course!” Tony shouted.

The drones were about 50 cm in diameter, much smaller than was expected, they had levitation technology that kept it airborne planetside and pulse tech for space. They had a circular black colored section on the front which were actually the mining laser and possibly the storage space.

No one could understand where these small things would store up to 100 kilo of mineral. In fact, because of the upgrade from the dungeon on the already upgraded blueprints of the mechanic, they can actually carry 250 kilo of metal ore.

With us were nine shield drone and seven Mark 1, or default, fighter drones, four laser drones and two Mark 2 Fighters controlled by Tony and the AI.

“We are coming up on the 2nd floor Iron vein.” Victor said as he looked at a map he purchased.

We reached the wide space with red colored walls. Floating out was a drone with a small scanner under it which shot out a laser on the wall.

Beep! Beep!

“Vein size, small, max weight ranging from 20 tons remaining.” it said.

“Perfect.” Victor said and gestured to Leah who took out several dozen machine parts that he pieced together into a large laser weapon. It was a heavy Pulse Laser meant for taking down large targets. “Ahahaha! Now this is what i am talking about!” He laughed as he finished putting on the energy pack which turned on the motor that began to produce energy to supply the pulse laser.

“Shield drones, form three groups of triangle formation barriers in the back. Make sure all shields combine at the edge!” Leah shouted.

The drones in question moved into formation and activated the barriers.

“Get in battle positions!” Leah shouted and quickly the others began to hide behind the barriers while Mirella got out and ready while Leah pulled out her Cursed wand so that she can use magic freely since the earth beasts can appear from anywhere. “Mining drones, commence mining on the walls behind the barriers!” Leah commanded.

Beep! Beep!

They beeped once and flew along the wall at least a meter away from each other. Everyone watched curiously as the black disk on their front began to spin rapidly and glow red before it shot red beams that gathered before shooting forward and striking the wall before expanding like a bubble of energy which began to vaporize the rock. A kind of returning beam withdrew to the centermost red dot releasing a laser.

“Ahahaha! It’s working!” Victor laughed.

“What is happening?” Leah asked.

“A common default or Mark 1 Mining drone can’t do this! The laser was specially created so that it gathers only minerals and not rock. This means that all the Iron grains as well as all the other ‘impure’ metals are rapidly being gathered after the rock is vaporized!” He laughed.

“How long does it take to min then?” Joce asked.

“Around 10 minutes and it’s battery will soon run out so after that we can move to a different node of material.” he said happily.

VRRRR!

His weapon began to vibrate while the rest noticed the ground began to vibrate as well. Suddenly a burst from a huge swarm coming through came from the corridor.

“Dust Bunny swarm!” Mirella shouted as she quickly ran into the barrier before the swarm slammed it. They were weak and couldn’t break it but it was suicide to face it along.

“Fall with gentle winds of the sky, [Rainfall]!” Leah chanted and suddenly, in the air above, rain clouds formed and suddenly began to fall causing the dust rabbits to screech and run away but several dozen were caught and their dust absorbed the water and fell apart.

She pointed at the mud forming and started to spin the wand around causing the mud to gather into a ball. “Scanner drone, how many dust rabbits comprise this mudball?” Leah asked.

A scan later the robot beeped, “78” it replied.

“Hmm… not a bad number.” she mutter as she stored it while the dust rabbits were fearful of approaching but this is the reason mud golem exists in the dungeon.

BLOOP!

“It’s coming!” Joce said.

Slowly the water began to flow towards the back of the room and slowly gathered the dirt around it as several glowing stones shined in the center and gathered mud and formed their droopy bodies.

“Heh, the dust rabbits evolved into mud golems, this dungeon is quite smart when it created this creature since it uses the rabbit’s own natural weakness to form a monster that counters its own weakness.” Tony commented.

“Since it’s more beneficial…” Leah said and the rabbits suddenly flooded the room again with the slow moving mud golems behind them. Suddenly an even larger rain cloud appeared and began to rain from the back first and with even more water since Leah had used more mana rapidly dissolving all the monsters including the current mud golems but their cores were there and with Joce, Leah and Nelim using telekinesis, the ripped five out quickly and brought it into the barrier.

“After you know their weakness, it becomes boring to hunt them.” Joce said.

“Well… it makes easy mana at least.” Nelim said.

Everyone laughed as countless other Mud golem began to sprout out and the golems started to form.

“Alright, i counted 42!” Tony shouted as he flew overhead.

“Good enough.” Leah said and suddenly she pointed her wand up and two balls formed. One of powerful fire and one of strong light. She sighed and got ready as she pushed the two balls out of the barrier, “Be careful!” Leah said.

Everyone quickly diverted their eyes. The two balls overlapped and suddenly a huge drain of mana from Leah was felt as suddenly the two balls formed a what seemed like a miniature Sun.

A massive heat wave spread out, “Mixed magic! [Solar Flare]!” Leah shouted and instantly the Mud golems was blasted with the heatwave and completely dried.

The ball died out a second later leaving Leah drained but drinking a mana potion quickly her dizziness slowly faded.

“Good job kid, it’s not everyday you can find a 15 year old that can used mixed magic like that.” Joce said at her captains talent.

“Thanks, it’s hard to support the spell though.” Leah said as she walked out and stored the 42 dead bodies of the dried up mud golems. “After mud golem is…?” Leah asked.

“Two waves of rabbits and Mud golems before Rock spiders come. If that doesn’t work then the Rock dolls appear.” Tony chuckled.

They nod but after checking the progress of the drones, it showed that there was only five minutes left so it was easy enough to wait for the next wave that came soon after. Taking out the dirt ball as they appear, the cave is swarmed once more and we follow the procedure once more. Throwing the ball at the incoming rabbits, Leah cast the water magic again. The ball was simply to cause mayhem because there is much less reward cashing in Dust rabbits compared to mud golems.

With the water, even more golems appeared and using mostly fire magic this time, it takes much longer to dry them but we accomplish it and store them just as the drones finish up and signal a lack of power.

“How boring, floor two is too boring now.” Tony complained.

“Yeah but floor three is overkill.” Leah replied.

The reason is the full grown Rock Golems. Their power is three times the already hard to kill rock dolls and the rabbits also get a huge upgrade after that as well.

Several hours later, the party was roughed up while storing the many stone bodies of the Rock Spiders, “I think we should return back. I’m exhausted!” Leah said.

“The Drones are just about full.” Victor said equally tired.

At that moment the drones finished up and signaled their max capacity being full.

Leaving the mining zone, the encounter rate instantly dropped to an all time low and they soon returned to the surface and had to pay for removing the 900+ Mud golems and the 1,420 rock spiders as well as the 2,500 kilo of raw metal which summed up to over 2,000 credits and several mana stones.

After filling them up, we were exhausted and headed back to the ship.

Dropping all the bodies into the cargo and filling it up, the drones headed to the drop zone and a space under them opened up and an outward vortex formed and suddenly perfectly box shaped metal began to pour out and pile up. “Metal deposited, proceeding the Drone station!” they all said and they flew off to the Mining drone station while the party looked at the results of the mining.

“It’s quite interesting, although they mixed everything up, it’s in perfectly solid blocks ready to smelt.” Leah said.

“Yep, each block should weigh around 20 kilo so be careful with our feet.” Victor said and the others chuckled a bit before they headed up tired to take a bath and head up to eat some of Nelim’s food while Tony took care of starting up the Mineral refiner and processing the metal while absorbing the corpses.

When everyone was gathered the AI gave the overview of the catch.

Daily income

Mud Golem

80 x 934 = 74,720

Rock Spider

25 x 1,489 = 37,229

Raw mineral

Iron = 2258 kilo

Zinc = 22 kilo

Copper = 180 kilo

Lead = 50

Seeing the results, they were surprised to find such a large amount of impurities clearly marked out. “How did it mark out perfect?” Leah asked.

“Duh! We made the machines so that it would show that stupid!” tony scornfully said.

Sighing, Victor explained, “The Mining drones were made to get rid of Rock or in other words silica impurities which require Limestone during the forging process to remove. Prematurely getting rid of it increase the quality and production speed allowing us to produce better metal at a quicker pace. With that, the drones target only the actual metals in the wall while attacking non-metals.” Victor said.

Understanding the detailed explanation, they felt the drones were even more impressive now. Although the mining speed was slow, it was clearly much better.

“So how much MP do you have stored?” Leah asked.

“With the leftover from the previous hunts, 125,000 or so.” Tony said.

The crew opened up the list of upgrades given by Chroma and began a long discussion on which item to focus on. Thanks to the iron and copper, the price for everything had dropped about double the weight of iron and three times the weight of copper. That means the iron had a value reducing capability of 2 mp for 1 kilo of iron and copper had a 3:1 capability due to their purpose.

“If we could only find silver or mithril, those are the two best conductive materials.” Victor scowled.

“If i remember correctly, silver has the best electric conductivity and Mithril the best mana right?” Leah asked.

“Yeah, Mithril is a mana saturated and mutated isotope of Silver, if silver was to become radioactive in a planet with little to no mana, it would simply break down like a common metal but when mana is present, the metal stabilizes by absorbing huge quantities of mana and mutates to this magical metal.” Victor explained the science behind the magic metal. “Equipment like hyperdrive, Gravity tech, shield tech, respawn tech, and more, all of this requires mithril. Especially the Dungeon core holder.” Victor explained.

As the going says, one cannot underestimate any trade, a learned person would be incredibly useful when the time comes.

“Should we move to the 3rd floor soon?” Mirella asked.

“Hmm… it will be much harder down there, we will need to upgrade our weaponry and arm soon.” Leah said looking at their armor.

Most of it was gained from the 3rd floor of a goblin dungeon but the difference gained in a Golem dungeon was huge especially with the high level industry in this town.

“If your worried about equipment, don’t be. We have plenty of space in the ship so rust bucket, can build me a Forgery soon.” Victor said confusing everyone.

“You can forge?” Tony asked.

“Blast it! I’m a fucking mechanic! Of course i fucking can! If i couldn’t how the hell would i make the fucking parts for my own gear!” Victor said annoyed.

It made sense, in fact, the trade blacksmith wasn’t by itself anymore but was absorbed into several other trades of heavy industry. Although mass production took a large amount of it, hand made equipment was still always better than mass produced goods. An example was Pelodius’ own magically formed weapons but he still needed magical materials.

“So we agree on the infirmary?” Leah asked.

“Yes!” Everyone said together.

Tony got to building it quickly turned the room with all of Joce’s tools into a large infirmary which contained all the necessities found in a hospital as well as medical research center since the room was split into several sections and had an isolated room with a single entrance with an isolation room where hazmat suits were hanging for when something dangerous was inside. The isolation room was military grade and all the walls were made without a single crack and it wasn’t near the outer side of the ship. The most important part of this was the respawn pad.

After dinner, everyone headed down and found the room and Joce quickly got to work to adding the binding to everyone’s crystal and called all the imps and Queror for a medical check up.

The imps weren’t given crystals but Queror’s own crystal was bound so that he wouldn’t die in the ship.

The plans to come was to keep upgrading the ship until all the systems were built and to complete what was remaining to get the ship in space. When the check up was complete, everyone went to do there own thing.

***

WOOSH!

Pelodius and his crew watched as the research ship rapidly grew as their 60,000 mp were rapidly used with a triangle shaped body, the research vessel gained one more floor and all the exterior was now part of the ship.

“Let us go inside.” Pelodius said and entered to see. The cargo had increased and the vessel looked much cleaner and better.

“The increase is impressive.” Lorelei said.

“Everyone is dismissed, tomorrow we will go another round of hunting.” Pelodius said and everyone soon spread out.

Walking through the ship, Pelodius eventually reached one particular room at the center was a pillar that kept humming and mana was particularly dense in this room.

Pelodius frowned, “‘A room that cost a lot and has little return.’, why do you have to insist on this room?” Pelodius asked Adal.

“Because~! You won’t be able to even access my universes magic if you don’t train enough!” She said pouting.

“Did you get Leah to start training already?” He asked.

“She is… she is even using the same opening technique as you so that she can make up for the weakness that mages generally have.” Adal said nodding approvingly. Obviously the body is the weakness of the mage, they are slow and weak so one hit can kill them but training that technique would let her close that gap as well as allow her to access heavy magical artillery weapons perfectly suited for someone with such high magical talent.

“From the sound of your voice, it’s not going well.” Pelodius said.

“Um… well… it’s like this, although she is gaining really good control, she has over twenty important blockades along her body that concentrates most of the energy from that neutralizer thingy you said. They could only close completely a very small section but because her body rejected the energy, all that excess energy focused on these points and it is taking a huge amount of mana and energy to grind down that energy to open the channel.” She explained.

Sighing in a tired manner, Pelodius walked around as he saw floating wispy creatures. “So these are the magical creatures you found you could naturally spawn?” Pelodius asked.

“Yep!” She said excited.

Magic Creature Spawn page

Nanite Swarm (1000x)

20 mp

Basic Elemental Spirit

30 mp

Barrier Spirit

100 mp

Sprite

60 mp

Warrior Sprite

150 mp

Plant Spirit

200 mp

(Further creatures are locked until later expansions, or discovery)

“You do have the default drones right?” Pelodius asked worried.

“Yes…” Adal said annoyed.

Tech Spawn page

Default Rank

Laser Drone

30 mp

Sentry

60 mp

Shield

100 mp

Fighter

120 mp

Crab

200 mp

Mark 1

Improved Laser Drone

40

Improved Sentry

80

Improved Shield

150

Improved Fighter

180

Improved Crab

300

(Further creatures are locked until later expansions, or discovery)

Looking at the more reliable drones, of which he obtained from Tony who had uploaded the blueprints of the basic drones to his ship. Still, this Magic Spawner Chamber had it’s undoubtable advantage.

About it guzzled up mana faster then was produced, even after having upgraded Adal’s Holder even before upgrading her size, it was important to secure a training location for his magic. Training with magic and control was partly what he focused on after daily improvements and research he did. The only reason was that he had touched upon Adal’s magic system which revolved around countless unknown runes.

The magic runes are no mystery to mankind, they have existed and were formed from an early era and have long since been the means to forming magic circles and were used for magical programming that many magitech weapons were built with. The reason why Pelodius had decided to train more was because of the power behind the simplest rune.

While training basic Fire Ball spell, he had focused intensely once to form and shoot quicker and inexplicably, in his mind, a strange glowing rune had appeared and aided him in forming a fire ball four times stronger and many times more stable than he had ever made during his two weeks of training.

It was a single rune that did that so how could he not have instantly realised the power behind it.

As a researcher, discovering something new by accident was one of the things he aspired for and even more so as a Weapons developer. As such, in his mind the idea came, ‘If i could discover more and figure out how these runes worked for real, it would instantly improve all my magic technology production and power!’

That said, his biggest desire at the moment, after hearing Adal talk about Leah’s problem, was how to help her solve it. As he sat down and began to meditate slowly, his thoughts were simple and clear, “I’ve got to make something like the Neutralizer but that counters the effect of father’s own. I’ve seen all the blueprints and even know that he built an even better and more efficient one after the first one blew up in hopes to finally seal up Leah.”

As he was still getting into the state of meditating the door opened to the room, “C-captain, there are some people on the intercom wishing to speak with you. They say they are your brothers and sisters.” Morris, the monster trainer, said.

“Brothers?” Pelodius thought.

Since he had not begun, he stood up and followed the boy to the bridge where a holoscreen had opened up and indeed, all his sickly looking brothers and sisters that he has known for 27 years, were there.

“Brother!” the leading one said. It was his eldest brother.

“Big brother… what do you need? And do not say that you are in behalf of father because i don’t give a damn.” Pelodius said.

They all scowled, “Don’t mention him, we are also fed up with him.” he said.

Pelodius was confused because his brothers and sisters were much more submissive to their father then Pelodius. “Did something happen?” he asked.

“Yes, after you left, the Commander of the Helionova Military defense army in the space station came and picked up the combat gauntlet you had finished before dissolving the contract with us. After that father went crazy and like everything bad that happens, he blamed it all on Leah. Frankly, we had enough at this point.” his eldest sister said.

“What did you want from me?” Pelodius asked.

“Um…” his eldest brother scratched his head and sighed, “We were hoping that you could accept us as part of your research crew. We know that you purchased an F343 Research Cruiser from the Recruit ship line. We all, frankly, don’t have money for even the simplest research ship since all of them all cost over 150,000. We were never chief of our own research like you and you gained your own money separate from father but we don’t have your talent…” He said.

“I’ll say it now, I joined Leah in a fleet format. If it were any random person, i would have simply recruited if their skills were good enough but this goes back too far for her, I’ll only let you aboard when you go directly to Leah and ask her directly and not through holo transmission. Also… you had better apologize for every last little thing you did to her since she was little just because father said so!” Pelodius said.

His crew was shocked by the cold tone that came from him when he was talking to them all and about their father. None of them butted in though, it wasn’t in their right or place to butt into such an internal family problem like this.

The faces of the five turned bright red from shame and avoided their eyes. “W… okay…” He said in shame but Pelodius formed a small smile.

“I am currently busy planning a new project to help Leah’s out of control mana.” he said and narrowed his eyes at them. They realized that it was to get rid of the side effects of the machine they equally hated.

“Alright, we will not keep you brother.” the eldest said and the holo screen shut off.

No one talked with Pelodius because he quickly left for the room he was in to start meditation.